


Thursday's Child Has Far To Go

by Philosophizes



Series: SHIELD Classifieds [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, character history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:38:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life of Phillip Jared Coulson, born on the first of May 1980 in Valhalla, New York, eight minutes down the road from Westchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thursday's Child Has Far To Go

Phillip Jared Coulson, third child and only son of Mr. Wesley Coulson and Dr. Maude Joan Baines, was born to the family on Thursday May 1st of 1980 at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York. On May 3rd, Dr. Baines and Mr. Coulson took Phillip home. He slept the entire ten-minute drive from the hospital to the Baines-Coulson home near the Hudson in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Waiting for him at home were his older twin sisters, Innes and Shona, age 3; and Dr. Baines’s aunt Eimhir Allaway, who had been babysitting.

“Thanks, Aunt Emmy,” Dr. Baines told her tiredly, and the old Scottish woman assured her it was no trouble, her girls had been missing her, I’ll take little Phillip for a minute, hm?

Eimhir Allaway took Phillip in arm and sat with him in the kitchen, coaxing him into eating a bit of salt and giving him a silver coin to hold. Phillip plopped it down on his chest.

Eimhir chuckled.

“That’s a way not to be loose or a tight-fist about money, eh? Born on the first of the month as well, lucky little boy.”

Dr. Baines appeared again, sighed a little at her aunt’s superstitions, and whisked her infant son off to bed.

* * *

On November 5th, 1981, Kenna Coulson, the last child of Mr. Wesley Coulson and Dr. Maude Joan Baines, was born at the Westchester Medical Center. Phillip was fussy all day, and only quieted when Kenna was installed in the crib they were now to share.  

Their parents were relieved, and Eimhir stayed for a few days, smiling whenever Phillip and Kenna refused to be without each other.

* * *

When Innes and Shona turned six, they were packed off to the WL Morse School, the elementary Mr. Coulson taught at.

“‘Nt Em!” Phillip demanded. “School!”

“In another three years, Phillip,” Eimhir promised him. She had been officially hired on as the child-minder while Dr. Baines returned to her teaching position at Pace University. “Then you can go with Innes and Shona and your father.”

“School _now?_ ” he insisted.

Eimhir picked him up, gathered Kenna, and plopped them all down on the couch.

“Very well- do you want to learn to read?”

* * *

Kenna kicked up such a fuss about Phillip going off to school without her that Mr. Coulson caved and got her academic testing to prove to the school board that she was ready for first grade. On the first day of school, Innes and Shona- who were _third graders_ and felt they deserved better than to be associated with their little siblings- got up early and ran for the car to get the best seats.

Eimhir stopped Phillip and Kenna before they went out the door and pulled out a silver coin.

“I used this coin for both of you when you were born,” she told them, flipping it so they could see both sides. Then she shifted her fingers, and the two pieces she’d had it cut into fell apart again. Both of them got a half.

Phillip and Kenna held each other’s hands for the walk inside, and kept fists curled around their half of the silver coin when they were sent to different classrooms.

* * *

When Innes and Shona were old enough for middle school, Phillip and Kenna started walking home from school rather than staying and waiting for their father to be done with his after school work. The walk took them through downtown Sleepy Hollow, and past the comic shop.

Phillip and Kenna were supposed to come straight home, but Aunt Emmy was the only one home and _she_ wasn’t going to worry the way Mother and Father would, so one day they took some of their birthday money along and slipped in.

It was _amazing-_ they riffled through long boxes and stared at the shelves together, and eventually Kenna very carefully picked up a copy of the first issue of _The Human Torch_ and opened it, careful not to tear the flimsy paper. They read the first page together before looking up at each other and smiling, widely.

They got home that day with _The Human Torch_ #1, _The Human Torch_ #2 _,_ _Venus_ #5 _,_ and _Captain America_ #23 tucked safely in Phillip’s backpack. It became a once-a-month tradition.

* * *

Phillip was eleven and Kenna was ten when they reached fifth grade, and as far as they were concerned fifth grade was the _best_ grade because they finally got to be in the same class.

This feeling lasted until December, when the local mutant hysteria that had been building, fed by the rumors of an area school taking known mutants, crashed on the WL Morse School.

A small group posing as maintenance workers planted bombs around the outside base of the school, and at 10:43 in the morning, when Phillip and Kenna were working through a worksheet on the different types of rocks, they detonated.

The fifth grade classroom they shared was one of the interior rooms, but it was on the second floor, and the bombs had taken out a lot of the structural supports. One moment everything was fine, and the next most of the floor was gone, half of the ceiling had fallen in, and there was fire and smoke and screaming and secondary explosions that would later be identified as fire reaching the kitchen and plumbing and boiler and everything stank of dust and blood and Phillip could feel himself _slipping_ down into the fire below-

And Kenna caught him.

She was on fire, all over, but it didn’t burn when she grabbed his arms and her eyes were fully black, coals in the inferno, and Phillip’s thoughts turned to the boxes of comics they now stowed under their beds.

They scrambled to the one clear, hopefully stable part of the floor and huddled, Kenna still burning.

“D’you think you could…” he said, gesturing at the fire starting to creep up from below, and the smoldering wall behind them. Kenna stared for a few long moments, and the flames twisted down and away, shrinking.

“I’m the Human Torch,” she whispered faintly.

Phillip tried to get them to stand, to get them outside somehow because that was what you _did_ when there was a fire, but Kenna couldn’t turn her fire off and her feet refused to go any closer than six inches to the floor.

“C’mon Kenna, shut it off!” he pleaded. “You remember what they made Professor Horton do to the Human Torch! They’re gonna make Mother and Father lock you up where you can’t set fire to anything, _c’mon-_ ”

Kenna shuddered and fell to the ground, clutching at him.

_“I don’t want to leave you I don’t want to leave you I don’t want to get buried I don’t-”_

* * *

They were rescued by some firefighters, eventually, but their father’s classroom had been on the outside wall of the ground floor, and there was nothing left to find.

Dr. Baines grabbed them both as soon as she arrived from Pleasantville and took them home. She made them all lemonade and went into the back yard, where they had a view of the Hudson. She asked a lot of questions and cried and when she lost control and screamed, scared and tired and grieving for her husband, Kenna burst into flames again. Phillip grabbed her and dragged her into the river before the lawn could catch on fire.

Their mother pulled them both out and locked Kenna in the basement, then Phillip in his room when he started yelling.

* * *

Phillip spent the afternoon crying at the window, trying to come up with a plan to escape and break Kenna out of the basement and _get away_ before the police came and took Kenna. They had to get away and hide- Kenna hadn’t done anything and hadn’t hurt anyone but everyone would think she _had,_ his mother had saying horrible things about Kenna and how the fire had gotten _bigger_ and he _had_ to save her.

He kind of knew that running away got you in trouble, but that was just for the kids who ran away in the city, right?  So they’d have to go somewhere else. Phillip didn’t know _where_ yet, but… people ran away to the circus, didn’t they, and circuses had fire breathers. Kenna could probably do that, and he could help sell stuff.

Phillip had no idea where to find a circus, but they had to be _somewhere,_ he’d seen flyers once when their mother had taken them to Pace University.

If they could just get to the bus and pay to get to Pace, they could find the flyer, and it would tell them where to go.

Phillip had gotten his window open and was looking at the two-story drop, resolutely telling himself _Captain America would do this,_ when a fancy car pulled up outside the house. A man in a great long coat got out the front and walked around, opening a side door that was a lot bigger than Phillip had expected, and helped a man in a wheelchair get out. They came up the walkway and rang the doorbell, and his mother let them in.

Were they police? They didn’t look like police. Maybe they were _mobsters-_

He started banging on the door, and eventually Dr. Baines came stomping up the stairs.

“Phillip Jared Coulson, you _stop_ that-”

She’d opened the door to tell him off and he pushed past her, running for the stairs. He fell on the last couple steps, tumbling into the living room where the two men were seated, and scrambled to his feet. He _had_ to get to Kenna, they had to _run_ before someone took her away and locked her up-

 He got the basement door unlocked and Kenna barreled into him. Before they could get up, their mother appeared, _furious_.

Phillip prepared himself to make a run for the back door when the two men from the car came in.

“Ah,” the one in the wheelchair said. “Dr. Baines, I believe this is what I’m here about.”

“You can’t lock her up!” Phillip told him, clutching his sister.

“My dear Phillip,” he said, looking a touch sad. “The very last thing I want is for your sister to be locked up.”

The man in the wheelchair got their mother to come back to the living room and talk about Kenna, and the man in the coat sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and showed them card tricks for the rest of the visit.

* * *

Phillip was told he was being bumped up to sixth grade, since he was so good in school and WL Morse was completely gone.

Kenna was gone. She had gone with the men in the car to some private school in Westchester, up the highway by Pace University. It wasn’t actually _far_ but she wasn’t living at home and they’d never been to see her and he was supposed to tell people that Kenna had been in a hospital for getting her lungs scorched and a psychologist had taken a look at her and said coming back would be too traumatic, so now she was with Aunt Emmy’s family in _Scotland._

Innes and Shona gladly accepted this and had a big birthday party with nearly everyone they knew. Kenna’s room was turned into a home office.

Phillip hid Kenna’s comics in with his, and started saying _‘Dr. Baines’_ in his head instead of _‘Mother’_.

* * *

School was _terrible_ without Kenna. Phillip came to hate the way his name sounded in his family’s mouths, and got people to start calling him Phil. He got a part-time job at the comic shop unpacking and stocking shelves. He worked there full-time over the summer between eighth and ninth grade.

The job meant he got comics for cheaper and also sooner than everyone else, and also that he had _money._

He started paying the bus fare to Westchester every other Saturday, and spending the day with Kenna. They traded comics, and argued about fancy old cars as opposed to fancy new cars, and talked about school. They struggled through math together, and Phil listened to Kenna practice the cello in the Westchester School’s music room. Sometimes, they’d both stay over at Aunt Emmy’s house in town, because she wouldn’t tell their mother that Phil had been seeing Kenna instead of her all day. Eimhir Allaway and her niece didn’t really talk, anymore.

Professor Xavier and the other students got used to him. They played team sports on the grounds, Phil insistent that he _could to_ keep up with mutants, and eventually proving it. He got to be the best long-distance runner who didn’t have a superspeed mutation helping them out. Kenna learned how to use her powers without turning into a walking conflagration, and spent the New Year’s Eve of Phil’s senior year of high school stepping between one lit fireplace to another, and celebrated midnight by making fire animals on the snow in the front lawn.

* * *

Phil was seventeen in 1997, and Kenna was sixteen. They both graduated that year, Phil from Sleepy Hollow High School and Kenna from the Westchester School’s academic program. A flood of dual college applications later, they both moved onto the Bates College campus in Maine for their first semester.

College was the best time they’d had in _years._ They could live together without sneaking around, and were regularly in and out of each other’s dorm rooms. They synched schedules so they could have lunch and dinner together every day. They were The Coulson Siblings to everyone who knew them.

They spent their summers in Westchester, teaching small classes for room and board. Kenna was getting supplementary income from Professor Xavier’s college fund in addition to the scholarship from Bates, so it was only polite. Dr. Baines was paying for part of Phil’s, and the rest was from what work he did and scholarship money.

They graduated in the spring of 2001, and stayed a week in Westchester with their aunt and to thank Professor Xavier for everything before going back to Maine. Phil had opted for the National Guard their sophomore year to help pay bills, and they were going to get a joint apartment for the few months before he started on his eight years of required service. Kenna was doing work in the governor’s office.

Later that summer, they heard about Magneto’s near-attack on the UN summit, and decided it was good that they’d gotten away from Westchester while they could. A paramilitary mutant force was nothing they needed to get tangled up in.

* * *

Later the next year, after Phil had gone through some extra training and had a bit of leave before deployment, a mutant word-of-mouth party was in the works in Boston. Kenna and Phil made a weekend of it to drive down, figuring that they could see a few friends from Westchester there.

They got the party, and things were seriously shady. There was only one person they recognized from Westchester, and it wasn’t anyone they knew well, and by the time someone got on the stage and started plugging for the Brotherhood, Phil and Kenna knew they needed to _leave._

Exiting the building turned out not to go very well. The crowd was getting whipped up into a frenzy, and the doors were blocked by the crowds, and then the one person from Westchester _sold Phil out._

It had never been a problem before, Phil as a human among mutants. They knew him, they knew his sister, he was trusted. But these strangers apparently wouldn’t stand for that, not even when Kenna got between him and the crowd and yelled _“He’s my brother!”_ , the air around her starting to spark as a warning to the others.

Three very important things happened at once.

One, the crowd decided one pyro mutant and her human brother were definitely worth taking.

Two, Kenna went inferno and started levitating, small fires breaking out as she called on them.

Three, Phil took down the four mutants nearest him just as SHIELD arrived.

Somehow Phil got SHIELD working around Kenna, and Kenna coordinating with them, and managed not to die until the raid was over. He did break a few things, and Kenna was in serious need of food, so two SHIELD agents were delegated to handle them.

The man handed the remains of the party’s food table over to Kenna, who started making deep inroads while still looking protective. Phil wished he could casual stand between her and the agents, but was unfortunately immobile for the foreseeable future.

“I’m Agent Hill, this is Specialist Fury,” the woman said. “On behalf of SHIELD, we’d like to extend the pair of you an offer.”

* * *

Phil’s eight years of mandatory service to the National Guard would be considered fulfilled if he signed on with SHIELD for two. The Human Resources Handbook said that SHIELD “does not discriminate on the basis of age, religion, race, ethnicity, politics, gender identity, sexual orientation, economic status, marital status, fertility status, medical status, military status, citizenship status, inborn or altered genetics, magical ability, dimension or plane or universe of origin, non-corporeal embodiment, non-embodiment, psychological multiplicity, or biological vitality”.

He called the number Agent Hill had left him with, and she picked up.

“ _‘Dimension or plane or universe of origin’_?” he asked.

“We’ve had cause to be very thorough,” she told him.

“Why us?” Kenna demanded, taking the phone and setting it to speaker.

“SHIELD has many good agents,” Hill said. “Well trained and equipped for a variety of strange and unusual circumstances. However, it has become apparent in the last few years that our agents are not, by and large, the sort who can professionally and consistently handle the sort of strange and unusual circumstances the world seems to be throwing up.”

“The Brotherhood,” Kenna said.

“And other things.”

Phil looked back at the Human Resources Handbook. He was covered to within an inch of his life, and it would cost him less than the National Guard. He could be out and into a non-military career by the end of 2004.

“I’ll take it,” he told Hill. “Who do I call?”

* * *

Kenna didn’t sign with SHIELD proper, though they kept her information on file on the understanding that, should they need someone with an insight into something mutant-related, she could be called and recompensed for her time and any expenses incurred.

Phil went through training, and was introduced to the other SHIELD agents and specialists who were on what was colloquially called _‘The Twilight Zone Express’_ to high-ranked positions: Specialist Nick Fury, Agent Maria Hill, Specialist Sarah Garza, and Agent James Woo. Director Tandy Bowen and Commander Tyrone Johnson, Specialist Fury’s older brother, were only just shy of their fourth year of service, after acceleration based on Hill’s referenced “strange and unusual circumstances”. The recruitment and training program was their brainchild, themselves very used to SUCS, as Phil came to learn to call the situations he’d been hired to handle.

Phil two training-mates were Jasper Sitwell and Barbara Morse, who split from Phil and Jasper in the last two months of training to take the classes needed for her ‘Specialist’ title. Phil, already well-versed in the strange and fit from the National Guard, was offered additional ‘Asset Management’ classes.

 _‘The Twilight Zone Express’_ went out for drinks courtesy of Commander Johnson after Phil, Jasper, and Bobbi graduated his program. Everyone swapped stories- Sarah Garza was one of the mutants Xavier had passed over, Maria Hill had grown up on a weak point in space/time in Chicago, and James Woo was the cousin of what Phil understood to be the combination personal assistant and mystic backup to the man nominally in charge of Earth’s magical affairs. Jasper talked about the haunted house he’d grown up in, and Bobbi the mad science labs she’d spent her life around.

Commander Johnson shared his and Director Bowen’s life story- the Maggia’s runaway-snatching habit, an attempt at a super-soldier serum with a magic component, and running from organized crime with their new abilities. Specialist Fury, slightly drunk, just nodded along and told a couple outrageous stories about his elder brother’s mishaps.  

* * *

2003 was a hectic year, with SHIELD running around in the wake of Ross and the military at Culver, and then again in Nevada, making up guidelines and contingency plans for the phenomenon tentatively labeled _‘The Hulk’_ on the fly; and then later in San Francisco and Alcatraz, playing catch-up against The Brotherhood. Kenna was called in for that, Phil introduced her around afterwards. They took on one new person to The Express in the fall, Specialist Melinda May.

He got almost the whole way through 2004 thinking he’d hit the end of his two-year contract and be done with SHIELD.

Two years was long enough for him to see he was sorely needed, and to gain a reputation. He and Jasper swapped off being handlers for Bobbi, and took Melinda along on a few jobs. Phil had no idea how to bow out politely, and was starting to think he couldn’t. He talked it over with Kenna, who couldn’t give him much advice either.

September saw him in Budapest, which was supposed to be _easy,_ it was a shallow cover job, he just had to pretend to be part of the American Ambassador’s group for a few nights. It was one of those jobs that were assigned every so often to keep handlers in skills they didn’t exercise often.

He came back from Budapest with Clint Barton and Natasha Romanova in tow, presented them to Director Bowen, and went to do _absolutely nothing_ for a few days.

When Phil was called back into work, Bobbi had been tentatively introduced to Clint and Natasha, and the three had been put through their paces enough times to know they could learn to work together.

In November, Phil’s first mission with his new team of three, they were in Bahrain, where everything fell to complete _pieces,_ and everyone barely managed to get out with their lives. Director Bowen and Commander Johnson didn’t make it out alive, Director Fury and Commander Hill took over, and The Express added Specialist Illyana Rasputina. Director Fury’s first act was to figure out where they were getting all their faulty information from, and for a long time, Phil was out with Clint and Natasha, building SHIELD into the airtight, ruthlessly efficient intelligence agency Fury envisioned.

* * *

It paid off with Tony Stark- first with knowing to send Phil to talk to the man and ending up in the right place at the right time for Pepper and Stane, then twice with the arc reactor poisoning.

The week of Victor Vanko, Puente Antiguo, and the Abomination was the most grueling one Phil or any of his colleagues had ever experienced. He was in meetings with people for a month afterwards, updating SHIELD response procedures and wrangling with the military for control of the Abomination.

SHIELD grew and improved in leaps and bounds. Academies were built and formally established, the land and air/sea headquarters were designed and realized, and field teams could finally rely on having good-quality science and tech support for the duration of their mission.

Phil thought Director Bowen and Commander Johnson would be proud.

* * *

2010 was marked by the execution of Emil Blonsky. It took Phil, Clint, Natasha, Woo, May, Garza, Hill, Bobbi, Jasper, Rasputina, and Woo’s cousin Wong to manage the job, but finally The Abomination was rent to pieces, frozen in liquid nitrogen, shattered, and secretly buried individually in the foundations of construction sites selected at random and completely undocumented. Very small tissue samples were kept in the highest-clearance and tightest-security lab SHIELD had.

It was nothing less than a particularly gruesome murder, and none of them ever mentioned it again.

* * *

2011 was the year they found and unfroze Captain America.

It was good.

Then Fury told him he was officially in charge of the Avengers Initiative. 


End file.
